While the invention will be described hereinafter in relation to separation of particulate material from a gaseous fluid and thus concerns pneumatic conveyors in particular, it will be appreciated that this is only an application of the invention and that the separation apparatus of the invention may be used for separating any number of fluids of different densities such as different liquids, liquids and solids or solids and gases.
A conventional separation apparatus normally comprises a separation vessel which is usually a cylindrical vessel, a tangential inlet such as an inlet pipe connected thereto so that solid material such as finely divided particles, is projected substantially tangentially into the cylindrical vessel to form a spiralling vortex under the influence of gravity as well as by centripetal force. Normally air which is entrained with the finely divided particles is vented through a top wall of the cylindrical vessel. There is also provided an inlet fan or air blower which is responsible for projecting the mixture of air and finely divided particles through the inlet pipe. Usually the cylindrical vessel has a lower component or base which is frusto conical which has an outlet located along a common axis of the cylindrical vessel and the frusto conical base. When the finely divided particulate or solid material is conveyed through the outlet this usually occurs totally under the influence of gravity as frictional effects have reduced the centripetal force. By this stage, normally complete separation of particulate material and air has occurred.
A conventional media separator such as the one described above is described in Australian patent specification 511162. Other media separators are described in Australian patent specifications 519141 and 505915.
Usually the separation vessel associated with conventional separation apparatus is very large and bulky. The separation vessel is normally upright in attitude requiring considerable support structure and has an inlet fan or air blower which is substantially smaller in size. While the conventional separation apparatus as described above is efficient in operation it was usually not possible to transport the particulate material directly into a vehicle such as truck. Usually the particulate material had to be conveyed into a stationary collection receptacle located below the outlet. It was also not normally possible to utilise conventional separation apparatus on vehicles where large volumes of air are involved because they were too cumbersome or too large for this purpose. This meant that conventional separation apparatus could not be utilised for farming or agricultural purposes for example in achieving separation of a mixture comprising seeds entrained with a gaseous vehicle such as air.
Another disadvantage of conventional separation apparatus was that because of its size the separation vessel was a fixed installation and thus could only be moved with great difficulty. This also meant that the conventional separation apparatus was expensive to buy and could not be utilised in some circumstances where limited space was available.
It therefore is an object of the invention to provide separation apparatus which may alleviate the abovementioned disadvantages of the prior art.